I am having a hard time understanding the rationale of specialists being suppressed on the turn deployed-- primarily because the number of turns are so limited.

EX: If I'm in a scenario where there are "distant" objectives that need to be taken in 2 or 3 turns, and I need to bust through an entrenched line, what good is deploying engineers? I can't use them until next turn-- which is 1/2 the time I have to win the battle = too late. Why make them available if you can't really use them in time to make a difference? Are you just teasing me?

Seems like the consistently low numbers of turns to get objectives leave literally NO margin of error and drive a "puzzle solution" or something-- and as soon as I start feeling that way it just isn't as much fun. To me, this makes it "fake hard"--might as well say "drive on Moscow from Minsk and capture it in one turn". What, you can't do that? What kinda wuss are you? Guess I could mod it, but I would still like to understand the rationale.

Specialists (and regular steps too, in fact) need to be suppressed when added, otherwise there's the following very simple "gamey" exploit.

Suppose you have a really big map like Case Blue, or Kuibyshev. Suppose you also have a bunch of valuable armor or engineer specialists on one end of the map. You could then use "reorg" to put the specialists in the force pool, and immediately on the next turn they would be available to use on the other end of the map. Making them suppressed simulates the time needed to integrate the specialist unit into you existing formation, but also importantly puts a one turn break on the exploit described before.

We did discuss the following variation during the beta test, but it got scrapped because of release date pressures: when adding specialist and regular steps during first turn only, they are not suppressed. This would be like the "deployment" mechanic found in some other games. I'm fine with it generally. The only problem is that is possibly gives an even grater advantage to the first player. This could be a problem for multiplayer games, where P1 is already at an advantage simply because it's a IGOUGO game if nothing else.

Ok, I see your point about the exploit. I do like the idea of "first turn only", but understand the development time pressure/limitation. My thought is that if you are getting ready to conduct an offensive, your specialists would normally be deployed before the attack-- not have to delay a turn (a precious turn, in a game with virtually no margin for error). And so far, playing the Axis, it seems the Russian forces have bunches of their specialists ALREADY deployed, so don't see how it is really a P1 advantage. I would really love to see the "first turn only" approach in a patch.